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Consulaat Generaal Guangzhou

Introduction 

Location
The city of Guangzhou is situated in Southern China, at the mouth of the Pearl River, at around 120 km north of Hong Kong. It is the capital city of Guangdong Province. Guangzhou is also known by the name "Canton". The city is an important commercial center and it has the largest harbor of Southern China: the Huangpu harbor.

Climate
Guangzhou has a subtropical climate, without very distinctive seasons. The summer, which lasts from mid- April till September are very hot and humid, with lots of tropical showers. These months count for over 80% of the annual rainfall, which stands at 1800mm. Warmest are July and August, with a average temperature of 30 degrees. Although this is not very high, it is the humidity that makes the whether feel much hotter. December till February are the coolest months, with temperatures around 14 degrees.

Population
The 4 provinces that make up the resort of the Consul General (Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Hainan) are home to approximately 190 million people. Around 100 million people (officially registered 86 million) live in the province of Guangdong, of which 12 million in Guangzhou. A certain percentage of the population is migrant from other provinces. This percentage is slowly decreasing, because more and more people from the countryside are trying their luck in the flourishing Guangzhou. Most of the foreigners in Guangdong are from other Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, Malaysia, etc. There are about 35 Dutch people in Guangdong.

Languages
The official language in China is Mandarin (in Chinese: Putonghua). In Guangdong and Hong Kong the local dialect is Cantonese, but people can also speak Mandarin (except for older people). Pinyin is the name of the phonetic transciption of Mandarin. Very few people speak English.

Time difference
During summer, time difference between China and the Netherlands is 6 hours (12:00 pm in China is 06:00 am in the Netherlands). During winter time this difference is 7 hours.

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